Religion: A Cup of Water

"My first word must be a word of thanks to God, who blessed us by providing the opportunity .to visit America." The gaunt, grey man had been in the U.S. before: the worn black suit he was wearing had been given him by a grateful congregation in New Brunswick, N.J., where he had preached in 1947. But that had been long ago, before his years in Communist jails, years of poverty and isolation. Last week Bishop Lajos Ordass, Lutheran Primate of Hungary, looked with emotion on the free world again, but begged U.S. newsmen to remember in quoting him that he would have to return to Red-ruled Hungary.

On his way to Minneapolis for the Third Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation. 56-year-old Bishop Ordass (rhymes with war-dash) is now fully rehabilitated as Bishop of Budapest from the false charges of currency-law violations on which the Communists had jailed him in 1948. The six years of forced "retirement" after his release, when he supported his wife and four children by knitting, ended last October, and being free to preach the Gospel again "was like being given a cup of cold water when you are dying of thirst." The congregations who listened to him had changed, too.

"Before I went to prison the people were filled with anxiety. Congregations had scattered, and collaborating pastors were preaching a false gospel, filled with politics. But today there is tremendous enthusiasm for the church and its leaders.

"In one church, for instance, the collection has risen from an average of 300 forints to 1,080. People who used to go to far-off churches so as not to be recognized now go to church openly." And among Hungary's 6,000,000 Roman Catholics, 1,954,000 Reformed and 500,000 Lutherans, the Communists have brought a new sense of brotherhood. "All the churches in my country," said Bishop Ordass. "are closer together now than they have been in 400 years of history."